Friday, March 21, 2008

As some of you may or may not know, I work as a consultant for Enormous Computer Corporation, Incorporated. I know that incorporating a corporation is redundant but we just wanted to make sure.

A guy I work with invited me to join his NCAA pool so I jumped in with both feet. Every time I join a pool of any kind or sport I invent a funny team name, and I know I'm not the only one. In fact, I assumed that's how it went with everyone's pool. Some of my aliases in the past have been Sir Nigel Sorebottom (team name: Damn You Daddy Sir), Eastern Motors (note that this was back in 2004, okay?), and Coo-Day-Lah. So I assumed nothing would change with this pool. I guessed my picks and submitted under the name of "Larry Longballs." This name is a tribute, an hommage, if you will, to the Curb Your Enthusiasm episode where Larry David sustains a scrotum injury. Here's a YouTube--as usual, Leon sums it up for us:

Anyway, after the first games were played yesterday, I went on the Sportsline to see how I was doing, and I see a list of all the people in the pool. Everyone's using their real first and last names, and among all the peons there are some Enormous Computer Corporation high muckety-mucks in there as well. And there I am, 11th place out of 21 teams: Larry Longballs. I showed my wife and she's been laughing at me ever since, wondering how I could be so stupid. I was thinking of changing the name, but then everyone would see that "Larry Longballs" had been replaced by my real name, and the Encyclopedia Browns that I work with would have no problem then of cracking the case of Who Is Larry Longballs and Why Is He in My Pool? I did have enough foresight to block my e-mail address, so I'm at least covered there.

I told my co-worker, the guy who set up the pool, to protect my identity at all costs, and if people really press him, to say that Larry Longballs is a real name, a friend of his, and he's really kind of sensitive about his name so would you please stop mocking it now, thanks. I never win the NCAA pool but now I'm actively cheering against myself because a win by Larry Longballs may mean more unwanted scrutiny.

In other NCAA pool news, Jumbo Slice coaches a youth basketball team and there's this Turkish kid on there--let's call him "Kemal Ataturk." Kemal loves playing on the Jumbo-coached team because he takes the team out to the all-you-can-eat buffet after games. Jumbo, being the adult role model that every parent wishes his child could have, set up an NCAA pool for his team so that these middle schoolers could be introduced to the world of wagering on sports. For some reason Kemal missed out on the pool and he sent Jumbo the following e-mail (some names changed):

hi sorry i couldnt join the team this year cuz i didnt kno wen to sign up and where and [REDACTED] told me that it was to late and i was like SHIT

The subject line of the e-mail was "its kemal." Behold the future of America.